Indonesia has agreed in principle to allow the office of the UN Human Rights Council high commissioner into West Papua amid continuing violence in the region.
The long-running low-level insurgency violently escalated late last year, after West Papuan guerrillas attacked a construction site in Nduga, killing at least 17 people they claimed were Indonesian military, but who Jakarta insists were civilian workers.
In response, Indonesia launched a military crackdown in the region, leading to a number of deaths and thousands of people allegedly being displaced after they fled into the jungle.
The office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet told the Guardian that she had been engaging with Indonesian authorities on the issue of West Papua and “the prevailing human rights situation” and had requested access to the area.
“Indonesia has in principle agreed to grant the office access to Papua and we are waiting for confirmation of the arrangements,” office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasandi said.
Shamdasani has previously said that the attack by the guerrillas was unacceptable violence, but the Indonesian government was not addressing the root causes of the separatist conflict.
West Papuan leaders were informed of the development at a Geneva, Switzerland, meeting between the commissioner and Vanuatuan representatives on Friday, during which the exiled West Papuan leader Benny Wenda handed over a petition signed by 1.8 million of his people.
The spokeswoman said that the meeting had not been arranged for the purpose of receiving the petition, but was in the context of Vanuatu’s universal periodic review session before the UN human rights council.
The petition, smuggled out of the region in 2017, calls for a UN investigation into allegations of human rights abuses and for an internationally supervised vote on independence.
“In 2017, nearly 2 million of you risked arrest, torture and assassination to raise your voices through this historical petition,” Wenda said after the meeting.
“Today, with official state-level support from the Vanuatu government, we, the people of West Papua, have presented it to the UN high commissioner for human rights. We are working day and night to approach the UN general assembly in New York,” he said.
The petition was banned in West Papua and blocked online at the time advocates collected signatures.
Papers were “smuggled from one end of Papua to the other,” Wenda told the Guardian at the time.
In September 2017, Wenda sought to deliver the petition to the UN Special Committee on Decolonization, but was rebuffed, with the committee saying that West Papua was outside its mandate.
Committee chair Rafael Ramirez said at the time that the mandate extended only to the 17 states identified by the UN as “non self-governing territories.”
West Papua was removed from the list in 1963 when it was annexed by Indonesia, an act many Papuans consider to be illegal and which was the start of the separatist insurgency.
The petition included new requests for UN investigations into the violence in Nduga, including allegations that Indonesian forces used chemical weapons against civilians — a charge Indonesia denies.
Billy Wibisono, the first secretary of political affairs at the Indonesian embassy in Canberra, said that the allegations were baseless, “misleading and false news.”
“Armed separatists in Papua have conducted heinous crimes, including murder of innocent civilians,” he said in a letter to the Saturday Paper, which published the allegations.
“As a compliant member of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Indonesia possesses no chemical agents as listed in schedule 1 of the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Wibisono said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of